


these iron chains can’t keep me down

by perhapssoon



Category: Cars (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Magic AU, More tags to be added, Other, and human au as well, but I’ll actually put time into this, but it’s still magical wow, eventual romanticism ig, idk how cars work so, idk what this is, kinda self indulgent, lots of race cars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perhapssoon/pseuds/perhapssoon
Summary: In all his life, Lightning had never seen anything like this. Then again, it wasn’t any day where you met people who could use magic.The Cars magic AU no one asked for. Human verse.





	1. iron gates

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I don’t even know what I was thinking.

Lightning has never seen anything like this before.  These wrought iron gates that spiral in front of him seem to touch the sky, twisting and turning into itself before vanishing into the clouds and fog around them.  And Lightning can swear that he sees one of them move on its own.

There are no gatekeepers or anything like that around here, and he very nearly turns around to go back home, but Cal Weathers and Bobby Swift, Lightning’s best friends, have no intention of turning back.

“This is amazing!” Cal says excitedly, craning his neck to stare up at the brightly colored sky -- it weirdly happens to be a deep crimson -- in awe.  “It’s like it’s magic!”

“Magic isn’t real, Cal,” Lightning says, directing both Bobby and Cal’s attention back onto him. “And the gate is locked.  We can’t get in.”

“I can!” A voice rings out and the three friends stumble backwards in shock.  There’s a young woman sitting on one of the metal bars of the gates dressed in a bright yellow dress and black scarf.  “Nice to meetcha, travelers! I’m Cruz Ramirez!”

“Hi Ms. Ramirez--” Lightning starts politely, but she cuts him off quickly.

“Just call me Cruz! It’s less formal that way.”

“Okay, uh, _Cruz_ , we were wondering what this place is?”

“You don’t know?” The words seem to strike an impact with Cruz, and she hops down to their side of the gates.  “Wait, are you joking? You’ve _never_ heard of this place?”

Lightning opens his mouth to say, _No, I haven’t heard of this place, that’s why I’m asking you!_ but Bobby jumps in quickly, seeing the look on his friend’s face.

“Nah, we haven’t.  We were wondering if you could tell us?”  Bobby notices the significant age difference between them and the woman in front of them.  Maybe ten years or so, but age doesn’t matter right now, so he keeps his mouth shut, waiting for Cruz’s answer.

Cruz’s face goes through several emotions, landing on confusion and guilt quite a few times before she speaks.  “Can you do magic?” she asks instead, ignoring Bobby’s question for now.

“No?” Lighting looks confused.  “Magic? But it isn’t--”

“Ha!” Cal bursts out, grinning ear to ear. “Told you it was real!”  He turns to Cruz, who looked amused. “You can do magic?”

“Yup!” Cruz lowers her voice a bit as she speaks. “Everyone in this city can do magic.  It’s really cool. I’ve never met anyone who _couldn’t_ do magic.”

“And we’ve never met anyone who _could_ ,” Lightning puts in.  “So forgive me if I kinda sound a bit suspicious, but can you _prove_ you can use magic?”

Cruz giggles, not at all fazed by Lightning’s rather suspicious stance. “Of course!” Without warning, she rises into the air. “All magic users have some kind of specific category in which they are placed.  Their magic determines it, and basically we are limited to certain types of magic. I can fly and do other stuff related to air.”

“So it’s elemental?” Bobby asks, looking curious.

“I guess you could say that.” Cruz lands gracefully.  “You can use your element to do other things, like to enhance speed and stuff.  But you have to be careful because the magic draws from your energy reserves and once that’s gone, _you’re_ gone as well.”

“Yikes.” Cal looks at the gates again. “So, can we go in?”

Cruz shrugs, glancing at the gates as well.  “I don’t think so, because Mr. Sterling sometimes gets really strict with outsiders.  There’s a reason why we have gates.”

Seeing the other trio’s crestfallen looks, she hastens to add, “But I can probably sneak you guys in!  Even if you can’t do magic, I like you guys already!”

“Gee, thanks,” Cal says genuinely, and Cruz smiles at him.

“Miss Ramirez!” A stern voice echoes from beyond the gates.  “Are those outsiders?”

Cruz stiffens, and turns back to the gates to greet a middle-aged man in a silver suit and graying hair.  “Oh! Mr. Sterling! I’m so sorry, I just found these travelers and--”

He cuts her off so quickly, Lightning immediately finds something to hold against him.  “They are non-magic users, Cruz. I can sense it. Now, how about you come back inside and we can talk about this later?”

Cruz shakes her head violently.  “No, please, you need to listen to me!  They are nice people! I can sense it! Please, just let me take them inside and show them around!”

“How long are you three planning to stay?” Sterling asks Lightning, obviously thinking him to be the unannounced leader of the trio.

Lightning glanced at the others, who both shrugged, before turning back to the man behind the gates.  “How long will you be willing to keep us here?”

“A week at most, unless you can prove yourself helpful,” Sterling says after a rather long pause, and Cruz sighs with relief.

“Alright,” she says.  “Let’s go.”

She waves her hand at the gate and the bottom of it pulls apart, large enough to let them walk through and into the city.

Sterling seems to resign himself to be stuck to the newcomers, as he switches into tour guide mode.  “This is a completely magic-user city. We all have some use in magic, which you three _clearly_ don’t have.  Some are more powerful than others, some are more skilled than others. I myself make use of the earth to my own needs.”

“Really?” Cal looks amazed.  “Can I see?”

Sterling considers before shrugging.  The ground beneath them rumbles and forms into a small car, encompassing the tiny group.  Cal gasps in awe. “That is so cool!”

Sterling chuckles.  “Of course, it isn’t limited to elemental powers, earth connections can also be used with other items as well, which I can’t show you right now, because we need to see someone first.”

Cruz is jammed in her seat next to Lightning and he hears her mutter a soft _oh no_ and he knows this really can’t be good.

“Anyway,” Sterling continues as the car drives them further into the city, “I’m pretty sure you three have _some_ kind of magic within you, otherwise you wouldn’t have come into this place.  Only those with magic in their veins are drawn to this place, much less _find_ it.  So we’ll spend the week or so you have here trying to unlock your powers.  Which brings me to this here...”

The car melts away and Lightning almost falls over from the lack of support, Cal grasping his arm and pulling him upright just in time to see a young man (or, if  come out of the fog. When he gets closer, Lightning can see he is dressed almost in direct contrast to Cruz’s bright yellow. He is wearing a black hoodie and jeans, with purple designs running along his sides.  He also happens to be wearing a set of headphones, which he reluctantly takes off of his head when he sees Sterling.

“...this is Jackson Storm, an air user, much like Cruz here.” Sterling’s voice becomes slightly smug, but goes back to normal so fast, Lightning almost misses it. “He is an extremely powerful one as well.”

Lightning glances at Cruz to gauge her reaction, but the look on her face confirms Sterling’s observation.

Storm looks bored as hell, and Lightning can’t really blame him, but _god_ , does he _have_ to look that relaxed, smug, and confident at the same time?

Bobby and Cal seem to pick up on Storm’s rather obvious ‘asshole aura’ and both shift backwards just a bit when Storm comes to a stop in front of them.

“You wanted to see me?” The words are directed to Sterling, but Storm’s eyes are locked directly onto Lightning’s in distaste.

“Yeah.” If Sterling notices Storm’s disapproval, he doesn’t show it.  “I want you to show these three-- actually no. I’ll take Blue Hoodie here, what’s your name?”

“Cal, Cal Weathers,” Cal says nervously, after checking if he is the one Sterling is addressing.

“Right,” Sterling turns to Storm and continues, “Cal Weathers. I’ll take Cal and Cruz’ll take, uh, what’s your name?”

“Bobby Swift.”

“Cruz’ll take Bobby.  You’ll take this guy here, uh,”

Lightning speaks before Sterling can even ask the question. “I’m Lightning McQueen,” he says, and Sterling nods.

“You’ll take Lightning here, alright?”

Storm’s eyes flick over Lightning’s clothes and he feels like he’s being judged, before Storm shrugs dismissively.  “Okay.”

“Great.” Sterling claps his hands together, and the ground quivers slightly.  “Let’s meet back in the Main Hall in two hours. Show your respective person around, introduce them to people, get them down to their roots.  Get to know each other too. That will help in the trust for unlocking these powers.”

Lightning doesn’t know if he can really trust Storm, from the way the kid is eyeing him with a death glare.  He sighs and extends his hand to shake and Storm only stares at it before turning on his heel and walking off.  Lightning catches Cal’s eye as he leaves, the latter giving him a sympathetic look.

_Good luck._


	2. iron latch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lightning and Storm have some banter. Sorta. Not really. And there’s a banquet of some sorts?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is anyone still reading this.

The city is actually pretty nice, minus all the fog around.  Storm doesn’t really seem to care that he can’t see more that ten feet in front of him, and forges on, Lightning struggling to keep up.  He has a feeling that if he hesitates for even a second, Storm would just leave him behind.

Not that he would complain, really, because Storm is a douche as far as Lightning is concerned, but he really doesn’t want to run into any citizens without someone to vouch for his existence.

Storm stops in front of -- well, Lightning can’t see what it is; only the door is visible, but Storm opens it without hesitation and goes inside, Lighting just managing to get inside before the door shuts.  He finds himself in this massive hallway, that he can swear on his life someone really went all out decorating this place.

It has pitch black paint that coats the walls, with silvery dark blue dripping from the intersection between the ceiling and the walls.  Storms blend in well with his surroundings, and it takes a while for Lightning to find him again: standing at the end of the hall, talking to an older man.

The older guy turns to Lightning as he approaches, and grins.  “Well, Jackson, seems like you’re giving a tour, am I right?”

Storm makes a noncommittal sound and shrugs nonchalantly. “I guess.”

The older man just sighs, the look on his face telling all: he is used to this.  He makes eye contact with Lightning. “I’m Ray Reverham. I’m an air-user but I don’t really use magic often.  I just coach Jackson here.” He gestures to Storm, who looks like the equivalent of a moody teenager.

“Coach him in what?”

“Racing,” is the answer, and Lightning is surprised.  Storm seems like a lot of things, but a racer isn’t one of them.

“Like car racing?”

Ray nods.  “You familiar with the sport?”

“Yeah, I’m a racecar driver,” Lightning says, taking the initiative to get on the good side of someone other than Cruz in this wacky magic city.

“Nice.” Ray tilts his head in Storm’s direction, smirking slightly. “Maybe you two can teach each other some tricks.”

Storm, who was completely uninterested in the conversation up to this point, looks up, eyes wide.  “What?”

“You heard me, Jackson.” Ray’s tone takes on a bit of a warning tone and Storm huffs and looks away.

At least Storm has the decency to complain before full out exploding.  “Okay, but Sterling wants me to show him around the place. Something about unlocking his inner power.”

Ray nods. “So I’ve heard.”  And he leaves it at that before switching to the next topic. “I’ll see you around, right?” He’s looking from Storm to Lightning, so Lightning figures both of them should answer.  

His observation is proven true when Storm answers with a quiet “Yeah, duh.”

He follows suit with a quick nod, and Ray seems satisfied.  “Jackson, I’ll see you on the track at two, alright? And we don’t want a repeat of last week.”

Storm is already out the door, and Ray makes eye contact with Lightning and rolls his eyes.  Lightning grins. “He a handful?”

“You have no idea.”

Lightning catches up to Storm outside. “You guys have a track?”

Storm doesn’t bother to look at him and responds, “Yeah.”  He veers to the left and disappears into the fog, Lightning managing to catch up to him at a high fence.  Storm climbs over it, leaving Lightning to figure if he wanted to follow his tour guide or wait.

He decides on the former.

Climbing gates is harder than he thought, and it take Lightning a solid three minutes to scale the fence and drop down to the other side to where Storm is standing.  The kid doesn’t even seem to notice his approach; he just stands there, staring out at the fog.

“Can you see it? Or are you too old to see anything within two feet of your face?”

Lightning blinks at the jab but mentally ignores it. He’ll deal with it later.  “There’s fog,” he says, hoping some of the _duh_ tone seeps into his voice.

Storm glances at him, eyes lidded, and, lifting his right arm level with his shoulder, does some complicated gesture and the fog clears. “ _Now_ can you see it?”

And Lightning is blown away because _holy hell_ the track actually looks _good._ He’s about to say so before he realizes that Storm is staring at him in confusion.

“Is it really that attractive to you?”

Lightning forces his gaze away from the inviting asphalt and shrugs, struggling to keep his cool. “Nah, it just is tempting to go racing on that.”

Storm smirks, and Lightning expects a backhanded comment, but he says instead, “You’re not the only one.”

They stand in silence before Storm turns away, clearly bored now. “Can we go?”

Lightning doesn’t want to leave and seeing as the fog has cleared, knows he won’t have any trouble catching up to Storm this time.  He figures that since he is Storm’s responsibility, he can technically force Storm to stay here.

He’s right.  Storm lingers at the fence, looking extremely irked now that Lightning is playing him, yet he doesn't bring the fog back.

Maybe he can’t.

But Lightning isn’t worried about that. He’s itching to get onto the track, but his car is back in Radiator Springs, and he didn’t think to drive up to this place (which now that he thinks about it, would’ve made the trip a lot easier). “Do you have a spare race car?”

Storm stiffens. “What?”

“You heard me.  Unless you’re getting old as well.”

Storm doesn’t seem to appreciate the comment and glares at Lightning. “Yes, but I have to ask Ray.  Why?”

“I wanna try this track out.”

Storm looks shocked and somewhat horrified.  “I, uh,” he glances behind him like Sterling is going to show up any minute to scold him, “can’t let you do that.”

“Really?” Lightning wants to test Storm’s willingness to listen to orders. “And who are you to listen to that Sterling guy?”

“He’s in charge of the city,” Storm says nervously, a surprisingly welcome change from his usual smugness.  “If I disobey him...”

“What?  He’ll send you down to the ‘real world’ to learn some stuff?” Lightning asks, but then has an idea.  “Or I could just steal one, how about that? You won’t need to get involved.”

If possible, Storm’s eyes grow wider with horror. “No, then he’ll just blame it on me!  He’ll think me incapable of keeping an old man in check!”

“Excuse you I’m 36,” Lightning says indignantly.

“Still old.”

“Okay, but look,” Lightning brings the conversation back on track. “Let me do one lap.”

Storm shakes his head, shifting the headphones to sit around his neck.  “No.” He places a foot on the bottom of the fence. “You’d understand if you actually work for Sterling, but you don’t.  So you can’t.”

Lightning doesn’t know what to say to that, but then remembers Sterling’s demonstration of his magic.  It seemed like it wasn’t much, but since they were constantly standing on land, Lightning had no trouble thinking up some rather creative ways Sterling could punish them if they disobeyed orders.  “Fine.”

He follows Storm back over the fence, straining to keep an eye on the track until they turned a corner and it vanishes from view.

They bump into Bobby and Cruz on the way to what Storm claims is a dining hall, where “they eat, believe it or not”.  Bobby looks pretty chill, so Lightning assumes that Cruz is doing a good job to make him feel welcome, much unlike Storm, whose every action only proved that he is an asshole.

Bobby moves closer to Lightning and whispers, “Hey, how’s Storm?”

“Terrible,” Lightning whispers back. “He takes every chance to have a jab at you.”

“Have most of them been about your age?” Bobby asks. 

Lightning just gives him a look and Bobby smirks.  “Tough luck, McQueen.”

“We’re heading to the dining hall to eat,” Cruz explains, walking backwards and talking to them at the same time, Storm at least five feet off to the side. “Sterling wants us there to congregate there and stuff.  Assuming you’ll be staying here for a while, which, duh, why wouldn’t you be? It’s a great place! Anyways, since you’ll be staying here, you’ll need to stay in hotel rooms because it will be really weird if we were to share our rooms with you!”

She catches Storm’s disapproving and exasperated look and hastens to say, “Sterling wants to assign rooms.  Basically. Yeah.”

“Heeey, Cruz!” The woman in question turns, eyes wide and a smile on her lips.  Lightning could swear that a faint blush is rising in her cheeks, and notices that Storm looks vaguely annoyed.

“Hey Danny.” Cruz instinctively smoothed out her skirt and flashes the newcomer a grin.  “How’s it going?”

“Pretty well.” Danny looks towards Lightning and Bobby.  “Are those two non-magic users?”

“Yup! Did Sterling tell you about them?”

Danny studies both Lightning and Bobby, a confused look briefly flashing across his features.  “Yeah, weren’t there supposed to be three?”

“Cal’s back with Sterling already.” Cruz explains.  “And this is Lightning McQueen and Bobby Swift. They’re racers.”

“Did you tell her we were racers?” Lightning hisses to Bobby, who nods.

“Yeah, I can tell you already told Storm by the way he’s giving us the stink eye right now.  Pretty much everyone we met so far is a racer anyway. Including Danny. By the way, Cruz totally has a crush on him.”

Lightning smirked. “Of course.  I can tell as well.”

Cruz is really good at covering up her fluster, but both Lightning and Bobby see the way she moves slightly closer to Danny as they make their way back.  Storm hangs back slightly, his headphones back on, and Lightning feels a pain of pity which he quickly squashes.

The kid is a jackass.

Sterling’s in the doorway to greet them, Cal besides him looking nervous. “Nice to see you all!  Come on in! Everyone’s waiting.”

Cal brushes against Lightning as they enter the dining hall.  “Man, Sterling really gets on my nerves. He tries to be friendly, but it just makes him creepier.  How was Storm?”

Lightning just gives him a look, hoping it would express his feelings properly as they enter the dining hall.


End file.
